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Regulators are to launch the first pan-European investigation into telecoms companies’ controversial data traffic management practices, in an attempt to safeguard network neutrality principles.

European regulators will scrutinize whether fixed-line phone and mobile operators are giving consumers enough information about their traffic management policies, which can slow down customers’ Internet connections. The European Commission accepts some traffic management is necessary to avoid congestion on operators’ networks. Operators are dealing with an explosion of data traffic, partly because of bandwidth-hungry video services, such as Google’s YouTube and the BBC iPlayer. But Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner responsible for the EU digital agenda, is on April 19 expected to announce the regulatory investigation and warn it could result in new rules to safeguard net neutrality.

[Commentary] China's state news agency, Xinhua, is building a broadcasting headquarters in New York's Times Square as part of Beijing's $7 billion investment in global propaganda, including a 24-hour news channel in English. Meanwhile, Congress recently held hearings on a plan for Voice of America to cut its Chinese- language news broadcasts in order to save $8 million a year.

If public diplomacy helps determine which countries are on the way up and which are on the way down, U.S. actions speak louder than the broadcasts themselves. "We are in an information war, and we are losing that war," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to Congress last month. That's the predictable result of unilateral disarmament. As China, Russia and Islamist groups have accelerated their efforts, America has been withdrawing. Reductions in VOA, including an end to Arabic-language programming in the Middle East, are especially dismaying given the leading role the broadcaster played in winning the Cold War against earlier information-suppressing ideologies.

A focus on the Web for VOA, especially reinforced with circumvention tools, makes some sense, but it's wrong to think that new media completely replace what came before. The Web is important, but radio remains an essential medium in China, where most people still don't have access even to the censored Web. Firing the journalists who create the content in languages like Mandarin undermines both Web and radio efforts. "The Chinese people are our greatest allies, and the free flow of information is our greatest weapon," says Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). This is a simple but persuasive argument for restoring planned cuts to VOA and re- engaging in the information war.

Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra was the guest this week on C-SPAN's "The Communicators."

He suggested that he is not concerned that the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile could shrink the revenue from prospective spectrum auctions. The White House has endorsed spectrum auctions as a way to raise nearly $30 billion to build a public safety network, invest in research and development, and pay down the deficit. If approved by Congress, the mechanism would offer incentives to TV broadcasters to sell off their spectrum so it can be repurposed to mobile broadband. But lately, the Federal Communications Commission/White House campaign to jolt Congress into passing auction legislation has been plagued by questions about how much money the auctions will raise. The proposed combination of AT&T and T-Mobile has provoked concerns that revenue would plummet in a post-merger world where T-Mobile wouldn't bid and AT&T would have a mitigated need for spectrum.

On April 18, the House Oversight Committee will hold a field hearing in San Jose (CA) on federal regulations that constrain the growth of high-tech jobs featuring witnesses from Google and Microsoft. The hearing will be held at San Jose City Hall and will include a discussion of business practices developed by high-tech industries that could help reduce waste, fraud and abuse if implemented by the federal government.